Covid: Wrexham fighter determined to regain fitness to fight virus

A firefighter who spent weeks in hospital with coronavirus has described going home "weak and frail" to see his children for the first time.

Father-of-four Stephen Landon spent three weeks in Wrexham Maelor Hospital after contracting the virus.

After losing three stone (19kg), he remembers struggling to walk down steps to his house to see his children again.

"I wasn't the firefighter dad they saw before I went into hospital, I was this weak vulnerable man," he said.

Determined to get his fitness back, the 39-year-old, has been working out in his garden daily, and has now returned to work for North Wales Fire and Rescue Service.

"I can remember walking down the steps to my house, there are six steps, it was such hard work," he said.

"I remember saying to my wife, 'I just need to get my breath back and gather myself before I see the kids', because I was bent over, I was weak, I was frail, I was drawn."

Stephen after arriving home, hugging his youngest son Seth

When Mr Landon first fell ill with cold-like symptoms in March, a week after his wife Becky, a paediatric nurse at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, had been sick, he was sure he would "get over it".

While she recovered, Mr Landon's condition gradually worsened, and after a few days he was "on the couch, unable to move".

"I remember lying on the couch, half dead, saying 'Just one more day, one more day Becky', and she said 'no I need to ring an ambulance'," he said.

Stephen was almost placed on a ventilator and was taken into intensive care three times

Mr Landon, from Wrexham, was admitted to hospital on 28 March, where he was admitted to intensive care three times.

His lung collapsed due to wearing the oxygen mask, and one night, consultants rang his wife to say they may have to put him into a coma and on a ventilator.

"Thankfully I didn't have to go on a ventilator, but it was definitely a frightening time. I got to a place where I was saying my prayers just in case," he said.

"It's a feeling of suffocation, when you can't get your breath and breathe, it's a horrible feeling.

"There was one particular moment where I just felt, is this my time?...I need to make peace with everything...it was scary."

Stephen said he was hardly recognisable to his children when he was discharged

Mr Landon said he had tried to keep in touch with his family via video calls from his hospital bed, but it was hard to talk due to the mask and struggling to breathe.

"I didn't often talk to the kids, because I look back at the photos now and it would have been upsetting for my children to see me like that," he said.

Speaking from their family home, his wife, Becky, said it was hard to tell the children, aged 15 to eight, what was happening to their father.

"Each child had a different level of understanding," she said.

"The eldest was asking if dad is going to die, every day, for about a week. There were days when I said, 'I don't know, I don't know if he is going to die, but we have to be positive'."

Becky and Steve Landon - pictured before they became ill - have four children

She added: "There were a couple of days in hospital when we thought he might not even be coming home.

"But once he came out, because of his determination, I knew that he would get back to work."

After being discharged, physiotherapists visited Mr Landon in his garden, to help work on rebuilding his strength and help with his breathing difficulties.

Now, after working out daily outside, doing strength work and skipping, he is back working at Deeside Fire Station and says he is "pushing" himself to be fitter than ever.

"My fear and anxiety was that if I was to get it again, I wanted to be even fitter than I was the first time," he added.

'A life-changing ordeal'

While he was anxious to go back to work, he said that measures had been put in place to keep him safe, and that he had had a lot of support from family, friends, colleagues and the community to help him on the road to recovery.

"It almost doesn't seem real now," he said.

"For anyone to go through that, it's a life-changing ordeal. It has definitely brought us together as a family.

"But it does change how you look at life a little bit, you learn not to take things for granted."